


Two Years

by Tujima



Series: The Adventures of Harley Shepard and Garrus Vakarian [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 11:34:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14617557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tujima/pseuds/Tujima
Summary: I started going through another play-through of Mass Effect and, once again, fell in love with everybody's favorite Turian.





	Two Years

Two years.

Two years until he’d been rushed into a Normandy escape pod and blasted into space.

Two years since he’d watched that glorious ship explode into pieces across the starry sky, that leviathan of a ship beyond that had taken her down slowly turning and leaving the way it had come.

Two years since he’d received notice in that little hospital that there were only few casualties with the loss of the Normandy. As he flipped through the roster, one name making him pause and stare at the screen, wishing he wasn’t reading it properly.  _Harley Lynn Shepard_ , right there next to the photo taken when she’d joined with the Normandy. Her hair a bit longer, but still curly. Eyes sharp and the little smirk slipping free at the corner of her mouth. KIA and MIA were in bold red text near the bottom of the screen.

He remembered how he’d slumped in that little cot, leaning his head down over the small tablet, his long fingers gripping it so hard that small cracks began to appear around the edges and the screen began to flicker, her name disappearing and reappearing. The nurse had left the room at that point, but not before placing a box on a nearby table that she murmured was addressed to him, leaving the large turian alone with his thoughts, leaving him to grit his teeth and try to breath as deeply and smoothly as he could, not allowing himself to break down. Not letting himself be taken over by the memories of her laughter, of her guidance, how she handled herself with a gun. How she’d made his heart flutter each time the lift had opened to admit her to the lower decks of the ship, trying his damnedest to not remember the scent of her or how she smiled when she spoke to him, how the flutters had started to grow into love.

It had taken him a few days to be released from the hospital, just long enough to get him rehydrated and fed after spending so long in an escape pod. Once he’d been free to leave, he headed to the apartment he’d kept while he’d worked for C-Sec, trying to find a familiar place that he could be alone with his thoughts.

Once he’d gotten through his front door, he leaned against it, reaching behind him to lock it just before he slid down the door to settle on the floor. The tablet of crew missing and the package the nurse had left clattered to the floor as he did, just enough to make him look over at the box. Swallowing, he pulled it towards him, using a long nail to slice open the tape and pulling it open. The contents made him once again take a deep breath, this time it quavering in his throat, as he reached into the box and slowly started removing items from it.

Shepard’s hat that she wore when she’d been working on the Mako. Photos of her mother and herself, of Harley and the crew, even a few of Garrus himself and her together. He flipped the images over to read her scribbled hand writing, dates and names, pet names for the people in the photo. ‘Target practice with the best’ was written on the back of one with himself in it, where both he and Shepard had been shooting targets in the Spectre shooting range. ‘So cute when he’s sleeping’ was on another, this one taken after a party where Garrus had fallen asleep on the couch in the Normandy’s lounge. Tears started to glisten in his eyes as he delved deeper into that box, pulling out other odds and ends that held the remains of Shepard’s life. Her chain that had a bullet casing from her first time shooting with her mother, that thick Spectre belt buckle that she’d always worn when off duty, along with a jacket with the N7 logo stitched across the chest.

 _How could an entire life be diluted down to the contents of a box?_ Garrus had thought, sifting through the items with care, carefully picking up a tablet and pressing play on the vid it had contained. As it played, it looked as if it was being filmed by Liara, who was laughing and teasing, trying to convince Harley to pick up her guitar that she always had somewhere in her cabin. A few minutes of urging had convinced the Commander, and she settled on the couch in her room and began to play, her fingers moving over the strings and her eyes closing as she began to sing softly, too softly for the words to be picked up by the vid. The tune of the guitar let Garrus know what she was singing though, an old Earth song about unrequited love and regrets. Her eyes opened near the end and seemed to look through the vid into his, making the tears start to fall down his face.

He’d kept the vid, along with some photos, near the table beside his bed, the rest of the items he’d stored carefully in his closet. The next day he’d tried to return to C-Sec, to his old job, only to find that they were calling the Reaper attack a hoax. That Saren had been working alone. The new council was negative towards the Normandy crew, especially the commander that had let their predecessors die in the attack on the Citadel. Garrus had worked alongside C-Sec as long as he could before he’d left; heading to Omega to try and do some good without the rules and red tape that he had been drowning in.

It hadn’t taken him long to get a group of eleven specialists together that had similar thoughts to his, and it had taken even less time for them all to be gunned down by a traitor amongst them. Seemed like nearly seconds after, Garrus was slowly taking out as many mercs as he could, Blue Suns, Blood Pack, and Eclipse, he hadn’t been picky.

Two years.

Damn time flew when you had nothing to lose anymore.

Sighing, Garrus tightened his fingers around the bullet casing around his neck, then slowly got to his feet and looked out over the awning through the scope of his sniper rifle, trying to get a glimpse of where the new wave of mercenaries were coming from. Seeing one poke his head out from behind a bullet riddled column, Garrus squeezed the trigger and blasted a hole between the man’s eyes. “Fish in a barrel,” he muttered as the man slumped to the ground. Swiveling the gun towards the entrance to this death trek, he froze, seeing a new trio leaping over a barricade and pause as they saw the building, almost as if they felt the weight of his gaze through the scope. A Salarian on one side, a black man on the other, the center being dominated by a woman in blue armor. Her curling hair was cut close to her head, her head protected only by bits of metal and an LED screen that would help her find the perfect headshot. Garrus felt his heart clench at the sight of her, waves of suppressed memories and emotions of two years and more flooding back to him.

“Shepard?” he whispered.


End file.
